Morrissey’s mysterious spell is waning on ‘I Am Not A Dog on a Chain’

My relationship with Morrissey is ‘streets upon streets upon streets upon streets’: streets to entice you and streets to repulse you, with no sign of an end in sight. Whenever the entrancing lyricist cum outspoken exasperation releases new material, it offers a chance for me to reckon my admiration for much of his music with the turn my stomach takes after every statement he makes. I refer to myself very deliberately, because it’s hard not to find Morrissey’s transformation into a sentient repository of controversial opinions personally engaging.

I’m admittedly a Smiths fan who gingerly puts his hand into the fire of Moz’s solo career, quickly retracting it. Then again, I can’t help but like much of Morrissey’s work. ‘Spent the Day in Bed’ and his 2017 cover of ‘Back on the Chain Gang’ have long been fixtures in my playlists: ‘Suedehead’ and ‘Alma Matters’ are even good enough to match up to The Smiths catalogue.

At times you can feel like you’re listening to a Yazoo-ripoff band

It becomes hard not to find the aged lyricist captivating at the start of I Am Not a Dog on a Chain. As his morose voice echoes across the start of ‘Jim Jim Falls’, I’m already taken in – it’s like the start of ‘Strangeways, Here We Come’ all over again. However, the beginning is the album’s apex: perhaps for the best, Morrissey’s spell is waning.

I Am Not a Dog on a Chain isn’t as good as his earlier offerings, and even his swift witticisms can’t paper over the tiring self-victimisation in the title track and ‘Knockabout World’. The concept of not being a dog on a chain would be ham-fisted, even if he hadn’t based his past three albums around the same idea.

After all these years we should expect more from Morrissey, whose witticisms seem all the more predictable as time goes on

Yet, the album makes no false steps, apart from ‘The Secret of Music’, an unimaginative eight-minute crawl through musical broken glass. Morrissey remains the most astute British lyricist since the 70s, and being a lyrical savant he manages to maintain his mysterious charm. Though at times you can feel like you’re listening to a Yazoo-ripoff band, it’s not bad enough to detract from his pure compositional ability.

There are moments where he finds his breezy romantic charm, “before [love] goes/Do you have the time to show me/what it’s like”, and quick wit – “they [the dead] have no eyes, at least they won’t be going twice”. If you enjoy these aspects of his work, then Dog On A Chain won’t let you down.

But after all these years we should expect more from Morrissey, whose witticisms seem all the more predictable as time goes on. If I wanted to listen to a classic Moz solo album, I’d much rather turn to Viva Hate or You Are The Quarry. Or even better, just listen to a Smiths album.

Every song seems about two seconds away from Morrissey launching into more bile against The Guardian

Conceptually Morrissey’s music is increasingly reflective of his own self-isolation, and it weighs heavy on the album. Every song seems about two seconds away from Morrissey launching into more bile against The Guardian; now when he tries to play on his own persona in ‘I Am Not a Dog On a Chain’, it becomes difficult to know whether he is actually being self-reflective or mocking his critics. I suspect he thinks it’s the latter, but it comes off as the former.

In Morrissey’s autobiography, titled Autobiography (what else), he muses at one point about carving out his solo footing away from The Smiths: he fears being lampooned for “leaning too readily on the past”. Yet many of his recent albums have felt like he is living in some eternal time where he is still the self-effacing Wildean youth of years long gone – a past where he believes his constant bile will have no effect on his charisma. This isn’t as much a comment on Morrissey’s political views as an observation that effortless charm isn’t as easy to pass off when you are as self-absorbed as Moz.

Boar Music recommends:

• ‘What Kind Of People Live In These Houses’ – classic Moz.